Mass observation

I was living in Cork for the last inauguration, but came home from the archives early to watch. Though Twitter existed in 2009, trending hash-tags were not yet a “thing,” and one group tried to track impressions of Obama’s first inauguration using the Mass Observation technique pioneered in Britain in the mid-20th century. The January the 20th project tracked international impressions of the inauguration, and posted them with little analysis. The original Mass Observation project is searchable by topic, and includes diaries, surveys and photographs. The dominant themes include “sexual behavior,” “reading habits” and “bird watching.” Twitter is something like a perpetual modern-day Mass Observation – there were more than 14,000 tweets per minute during today’s inauguration ceremony. Trending topics included the musical performances, #inaug2013, #fourmoreyears, and FLOTUS’s bangs.